Advent Asymptotes

or, what the fortune cookie told me

Let me give you a glimpse into how strong my memory of high school math is: I just googled, no joke: “what’s the equation in math where the line never touches.”

As you can see, the answer is “asymptote,” which is definitely a word I knew long enough to pass a test some 20 or so years ago.

You might now say, “Eric, thanks for this really helpful review of an as-yet-undermined category of high school math. This is for sure why I’ve subscribed to your Substack: for the math facts.”

And for that, I say thank you; you flatter me. Also, you’ve clearly not ever read any of my work before.

But let’s get our asymptotes in gear. Hold in your mind exactly that image that my well-thought out and immaculately constructed Google search revealed: a line approaching a curve forever, drawing infinitely closer but never touching.

Is that the Christmas story?

*

We got Chinese food several nights ago. General Tso’s Chicken, fried rice, something with potatoes that had no right to taste as delicious as it did—that sort of thing. As is the way of the world, we also received a handful of fortune cookies. These were quickly distributed to each of our place settings at the table.

“I’ll go first,” our eldest proclaimed. Crinkle, crack, slip. Newly confident in her hard-won reading skills, we weren’t about to argue. “It’s okay to say no,” she read aloud, slowly, chewing on each word.

“Sometimes,” my wife and I quickly interjected before she’d realized what she’d said.

She shrugged and began to spout out her lucky numbers. “Why do I need these?” she asked.

“Some people use them for lottery tickets,” my wife explained.

“For what?”

“Never mind.”

“I’ll go next,” I said. Crinkle, crack, slip. I stared at the little fragment of white paper in my hands. “Peace and tranquility are coming close,” I intoned. I smirked, chuckled, thinking about all the unpeace and lack of tranquility both in my life (did you read last week’s Substack?) and the world writ large. “And never arriving,” I muttered with a laugh.

“Peace and tranquility could certainly come a bit faster,” my wife agreed.

“It says nothing of that for sure,” I noted. “No speed, no arrival. Just always on the horizon and never here.”

Less of a fortune cookie and more of a tease.

*

The image that jumped into my mind at the table that night—fortune firmly in hand, cookie crumbling on my plate—was, I now know, an asymptote. That’s what my fortune seemed to be describing, at least when layered over the real world: peace is coming, sure, but it will never truly arrive. We glimpse it; we hope for it; we can practically taste it.

And yet.

This conflict explodes over here. That bit of violence bubbles up just over there. I beat myself up; you tear yourself down. Anxiety and gun violence and the destruction of the climate and so on.

Peace and tranquility are coming but the train has stalled and we definitely have our best guys on the job but we can’t give you a new estimated time of arrival because all of the tracks have blown away and the ground has fallen out beneath us.

And yet.

And yet, it’s Advent and we are quite literally awaiting the coming of our God of Peace, the one who breaks into the world in a very real, gritty, bodily way. God grabs the lines on that asymptotic chart and squeezes them together until they’re all muddles and squished and appear as one.

That’s the Christmas story.

And yet, peace and tranquility have still not arrived. They’re still coming. And we still suffer in a world marred by violence and conflict and inner turmoil.

Perhaps it’s not God who reaches out and squishes that graph; maybe that’s our job. Maybe, as we see peace and tranquility coming closer and closer, as Christ enters into our world and all of creation erupts as the Holy Spirit bubbles over, it’s not our task to wait and watch. Instead, we need to reach out; we need to take hold of God’s own invitation.

Peace and tranquility are coming close—so, quick, grab them, take hold of them before they’re beyond our grasp! God’s invitation is always there waiting for us to welcome the Spirit into our lives, but we’re called to act now. Don’t delay.

That’s the Christmas story, perhaps, told in two parts: Christ’s peace has entered the world, drawing ever nearer to the whole of creation but never touching ad infinitum unless we reach out and welcome the Spirit in.

Hey there—You know what makes a great Christmas gift for the Star Wars fan and/or Ignatian spirituality lover in your life? “My Life with the Jedi: The Spirituality of Star Wars.” Just saying :-)